Dead at First Sight

19 Wednesday 26 September

‘Toby, darling, you really do look quite dishy — for a fifty-eight-year-old, anyhow!’ Paul Sibley ribbed his husband. He was seated at the kitchen table glancing through the images of him that Suzy Driver had found on her internet search and emailed him.

‘I can’t believe the bastards made me fifty-eight!’ Toby Seward, wearing his kitchen apron bearing the legend My sausage is on fire!, was keeping a weather eye on the water heating in the saucepan. He took a sip of his glass of wine. ‘Fifty-eight — I mean, how dare they? It’s outrageous, they’ve added ten years to my age!’

‘Eleven, darling, actually — Norbert!’

‘Yep, well, my birthday’s next week so it will be then, Mr Pedantic.’

Paul poured himself another glass of wine from the bottle in the fridge and lit a cigarette. ‘I do have to say, you look pretty good for your age.’

‘Not funny!’

Paul clicked on the keyboard to bring up the profile photograph of Suzy Driver from the dating site. He studied the fifty-five-year-old for a few moments. ‘Not bad, not bad at all for her age. Nice hair, attractive face! You know, I really ought to be jealous. All these lovely ladies fawning over you, craving your body. Eleven of them, no less.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I’ve got to admit they all have something in common!’

‘Which is?’

‘They have good taste.’

Toby blew him a kiss.

As steam started to rise from the pan, Toby’s phone pinged with a text. Almost simultaneously, the laptop pinged, signalling an email. The text was from Suzy Driver.

Sent it!

He took the pan off the heat, hurried to the table and clicked to open the attachment. Both of them watched the screen. An image appeared.

Toby.

With his handsome, tanned features and short, salt-and-pepper hair he looked every inch the charmer. Then they heard a cultured, very correct female voice that Toby recognized instantly as Suzy Driver.

‘Hello, Norbert, very nice to talk to you face to face, finally!’

The image of his face became a spider’s web of cracks, then froze. Toby watched, fascinated, as in a staccato voice that was very definitely not his own, with an accent he couldn’t place, the man replied, ‘My darling, you look even more beautiful than in all your photographs. Wow, I must be the luckiest man on the planet!’

‘You look very nice, too,’ she replied.

Animated again, his head moving, his lips formed a smile. Then the screen froze, once more breaking into cracked, jagged segments.

‘I apologize, my love. There seems to be a problem with the internet, I’m having to connect through my mobile phone.’

‘That’s OK, it’s been nice to meet at last!’

Paul stabbed the pause button and turned to Toby. ‘This is not your voice — it’s not you speaking.’

Toby was staring in shock. ‘No, it isn’t.’

For the next twenty minutes, riveted, they watched the conversation, which became increasingly personal and fruity. Throughout, with the image constantly freezing or fragmenting, there had only been a couple of moments of actual lip-sync. In both, Toby Seward — or rather his avatar — had said, very sincerely, ‘I love you’.

The same words he had used to the other ten women he was also flirting with, Suzy added in the accompanying text. Except, she explained, he wasn’t a Norwegian geologist. He was a nineteen-year-old student in Ghana. A ‘Sakawa Boy’. She urged Toby to look up ‘Sakawa Boys’ on the internet.

He googled the name and the two of them spent the next half-hour in complete astonishment.

‘Well,’ Paul said. ‘I’ve heard of conmen, but this is like nothing, ever!’

What they were watching was little short of a university in Ghana for internet scammers. One pupil said, to camera, ‘We are just taking back from the West what belongs to us.’

The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals — which included animal sacrifice — to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud, of which there was a wide variety.

The majority involved preying on vulnerable, unsuspecting targets in the Western world, such as those placing lonely-hearts ads, as well as bank scams on the elderly and just about anyone else. The money they were making was beyond what would have once been these young men’s wildest dreams. Now, on the financial and emotional ruins of lives in the Western world, they were buying mansions for their families, the latest designer clothes, and driving around in flash new Range Rovers, BMWs, Mercedes and Ferraris.

‘Unbelievable!’ Toby said.

‘But can you blame them?’ Paul replied.

‘What do you mean? You think it’s OK what they are doing?’

‘I do, actually.’ He lit another cigarette.

‘How can you say that? It’s outrageous.’

‘It’s outrageous how successive European countries raped their nation from the fifteenth century onwards, with England ultimately being the worst offender. This is their payback and good for them!’

‘I can’t believe what you’re saying.’

‘Read your history, darling.’

‘That was governments, not innocent members of the public. How can that possibly justify these horrible scams today?’

‘The British Empire spent five hundred years plundering the world. Is it any wonder it’s such a mess today? Get real. I’m actually finding it quite amusing.’

Toby looked at him. ‘I’m not sure someone who’s just been conned out of their life savings would agree.’

‘Mmmm, maybe not. Some of them are quite fit, though,’ his husband said. ‘Maybe we should have a holiday there?’

‘Do you want a nice dinner tonight?’ Toby said, then pointed at the saucepan. ‘Or do you want me to tip that over your head?’